A bit of Movie Magic

For the past year, I've been working quietly on a project I'm now thrilled to share. A new addition to The Screening Room, an online archive of vintage magic videos hosted by Magicana brings the private magic video collection of Larry Thornton to the world for free.

Larry Thornton, of Calgary, Alberta, recorded magicians in his hometown and at magic conventions across North America. Many magicians, still well-known today, were captured looking younger than I could imagine. The process of digitizing the 8mm reels has been slow and careful and now the archive is finally available. 

Take a look at a short sneak preview and visit the entire collection through the button below.

Fresh from the cutting room

With special thanks to Toronto's resident magic video elf, Chris Mayhew, I'm happy to share a compilation of my work over the past few years.

I can recommend his services most highly.

Glimpse into Magic Tonight

This week we're off doing a super secret something or other so there will be no show at the Franklin House. So if you have a few minutes to spend, enjoy a highlight from one of our previous shows. The main feature is a sequence with an egg based primarily on the work of Max Malini, which was later expanded on by two American magicians; Charlie Miller and Johnny Thompson. The second piece is a bit of a surprise based on the work of Spanish master magician Juan Tamariz. It's something I've never done on film before. So enjoy a little piece of Magic Tonight. Tickets for our upcoming performances are available online. Readers of this blog can use the code reality for a discount on the price of tickets and dinner.

A bit of bootleg footage

Last year, my show Lies, Damn Lies & Magic Tricks was in the Summerworks Performance Festival at the Scotiabank Studio Theatre. As an experiment, we included an announcement at the beginning of the show along with the cell phone notice saying "non-flash photography is permitted, weird stuff will happen and it belongs on YouTube and Facebook" just to see what would happen. Now, eight months later, someone DropBoxed me a the video they shot of a portion of the show from the audience.

I don't actually have all that much video of my performances and I'm always happy to see it. So even though this is (formerly) unauthorized footage, I'll share it, so that if there's anyone else out there who has something stashed away, perhaps they'll share it.

This remains one of my favourite tricks that I've ever performed. Those of you who have seen more recent versions of it know that I've changed the story from "waiting in a hotel bar" to "waiting in an airport lounge" proving that either my memory is getting progressively worse or I'm a better liar than ever.

New YouTube Page

I've started posting some performance video and other resources on my YouTube page. Feel free to subscribe there.